The Bold Soul: A Writer's Life in Paris

Oh, La La Dee Da

So, it's been a week since my French-ness ceremony, and it was a week filled with lots of tasks and challenges. Which is why I haven't had the mental energy to blog, though I sat down once or twice to try and come up with a decent post. The best I can do at the moment is give you the snippets of my life from the past week. Which feels pretty much the same as it was BEFORE the French-ness ceremony, when you get right down to it. I made the appointment for next Tuesday to go and apply for my French passport and the Carte Nationale d'Identité. The former costs 86€ and the latter is free. Tomorrow I'm going to chase down the timbres fiscales for 86€ since you can't go to any of these government agencies and pay in cash, check or bank/credit card. They only accept these fiscal stamps that prove you have paid but at a centralized location. Guess they don't want to bother the other fonctionnaires with handling payments. It's a good system -- for THEM. For the rest of us it means having to find a place that sells the damn stamps. Allegedly some... Read more →

Spring break

Another sign of spring and warmer weather: the free massages have returned to the Place de la Sorbonne. These people, affiliated with a group from a massage school, have set up this little massage station as an act of goodwill and well-being. They accept donations afterward but it's officially free. I tried it once last year and had an excellent massage; you just sit on a little stool and get your 10 minutes of zen! Read more →

In case you were wondering

I'm sure at least a few of you are wondering why the only thing I've been blogging about over the past few days are video clips of Les Miserables. Where are the lovely photos of Paris? Where are some of those amusing anecdotes about French life, or married life, or all of the above? Well, I've been in hiding. Sequestered. Stuck in one place. Although not by choice. All that new, fresh blog material is waiting somewhere outside my door. "Outside" - where I have not been able to set foot since some time early in the day on Thursday. Why? Umm... Well, I wasn't planning to blog about this at all because... well... it's been extremely unpleasant for me to experience, it would be almost as unpleasant for you to read about it, and frankly it's no one's business anyway. But in the interest of transparency and adding to our French vocabulary as the situation dictates, I will offer THIS explanation in French, because I think it needs no translation: Just between us: J'ai été constipée. Oh, so constipée. Get it? I have essentially been going, in no particular order, between bed, couch, kitchen and toilet since Thursday afternoon,... Read more →

Breaking radio silence

One of the reasons I've been a bit quiet the past week is that I've been working on a project, or rather RE-working on a project: losing weight. Of course, this is a topic that has come up on the blog over the years, and in my private life this is a subject that has occupied countless chunks of my time and energy since I was 15. For the past 15 years at least, I have struggled with the same 10 or 20 or 30 lbs up and down, and I was at least 50 or 60 lbs overweight on top of THAT to begin with. The reasons for all this are not worth going into at the moment. The net result is this, however: I am too fat and it is unhealthy, and it looks and (more importantly) feels terrible. There, I said it. I even bolded it. I debated long and hard about mentioning this here. This isn't really a blog about my personal struggles with my weight, it's a blog about Paris and travel and adapting to life (and love!) in France. And frankly, I think when you're someone who has been overweight for most of your... Read more →

Rainy day

After my doctor's check-up, I had nearly 2 hrs to kill before school pick-up and I realized I really hadn't eaten lunch. It's a cold and rainy day, so a toasted goat cheese salad and hot tea was just what the doctor ordered. (Well, in reality this doctor would probably have told me to skip the cheese, since we had a long conversation about how I can gradually increase my nearly 10-lb weight loss since February and cheese was most definitely NOT on her list of recommendations. But I don't really eat cheese very often; too much of it doesn't agree with me.) On the up side, the crap weather means I finally get to use my pretty new Toile de Jouy umbrella -- the silver lining in all these clouds. Read more →

Drenched

Me, after my trainer got done making me sweat buckets. Whew. Read more →

Oh. So. Tired.

In an effort to work on my weight and get healthier in this, my 50th year, I've recently begun changing my eating habits. I've done pretty well this past week, minus a few minor slip-ups (which were really nothing in comparison to my previous out-of-control eating). But the sugar detox which always comes with this early stage of cutting back/out certain trouble foods means that I am totally fatigued much of the time. I've been through this enough times to recognize the signs of sugar withdrawal when I see 'em (and feel 'em). I just have to work through it, knowing soon it will take care of itself and my energy will come back. So I've been laying a bit low around here. Doing the things that must be done, like housecleaning, food shopping, taking the Little Guy to dentist appointments and piano lessons, and we did have a nice weekend family picnic together on Saturday to take advantage of the good weather. I haven't been writing as much as I could have (same old broken record there, but one thing at a time), but I have done some writing, and I have been doing a fairly decent job of... Read more →

Because sometimes it just has to be said

Men, you have my permission to avert your eyes from what I am about to say. (giving them a moment to run and hide) Ok. Deep breath. And... IS IT FUCKING FAIR THAT WE WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE HAVE TO DEAL WITH MENSTRUAL CRAMPS AND TAMPONS, *AND* ALSO HOT FLASHES AND CRYING JAGS AND WORSE MOOD SWINGS THAN WE EVER HAD AT 16, ALL IN THE NAME OF THE MENOPAUSE YEARS? And the only acceptable answer? Is NO. I wish my body would get over the fence, already. Pick a side, dude. Read more →

Where "50 and fabulous" begins

I don't "do" New Year's resolutions; I haven't in years. For one thing, they don't work, usually because they're too broad and not specific enough, and for another thing, you end up feeling like crap after you've totally failed at keeping those resolutions within the first month (week?) of the New Year. How many people do you know who can claim they made and actually followed through on those resolutions to "lose weight", "get a better job", "make more money", "fall in love with Mr./Ms. Wonderful"? Exactly my point. But I DO set specific intentions for my year, and THAT seems to work out a whole lot better. The difference between resolutions and intentions is INTENT, and being specific about that intent. Intent is much more than making a vague promise to yourself; it involves a conscious shift in your energy, and a serious internal commitment to achieve that which you intend to accomplish. And of course, you have to back up those intentions with action... sometimes lots of action. When I reflected on what I wanted to accomplish in 2011 -- especially with the realization that I will be turning (choke, cough, gasp) 50 in a little more than... Read more →

Fish pedicure? Really?

OK, I have to ask: have any of you had the new "fish pedicure", and if so, was it totally creepy or did it work wonders on your tired, calloused, horrible feet and make them look and feel like new again? I think most of us women of a certain age (and perhaps a few men, too) can relate to how something seems to happen to our feet once we crest 40, give or take a few years, and where I once had lovely soft feet that were easy to keep pretty, now it seems to be a losing battle. Unlike a lot of people, I actually used to LOVE how my feet looked. I thought the shape and proportion was perfect (no freakishly long second toe, all the little piggies on MY pieds were "just right"). I used to love wearing sandals and going bare-foot. Now? Ugh. Just... UGH. That's all I can say. Even dropping 40 bucks on a super-pedicure hasn't helped, although the hot rocks and massages are sublime. Now, I'm hearing about these new "fish pedicures" where they put your feet in a basin with some toothless little fishies (not piranhas), known as "doctor" fish (I'm... Read more →